Art concept: Marko Pogačnik, Marika Pogačnik i Simona Čudovan
This installation enables us to experience space dimensions that extend beyond the standard materialized horizon of space and time. This has been achieved by special signs that the author calls cosmograms. With the help of visual language, a feature of a given space dimension that can be felt and experienced through touch is inscribed in the cosmograms. The installation is shaped as a labyrinth composed of parallel spaces through which the visitor can find his way by touching its walls and be guided from one experience to another.
We have come to an era in the development of Earth marked by significant changes in the structure of space and time, in the way our daily reality is presented. In order not to become strangers on our own planet, which is going through transformation, it is important to gather experience from parallel dimensions of existence. Art wields tools and language that can help bring our experience closer to what ostensibly does not yet exist, but is, in fact, present in the realm of the invisible.
The installation is complemented with relief drawings representing creatures and dimensions of space that man today perceives as invisible even though they are a vital part of the living cosmos. The experience of invisible spaces is also complemented by cosmograms, which Marika Pogačnik made from different types of wood, so their different qualities can be experienced by touch.
Marko Pogačnik
About the author
Marko Pogačnik was born in 1944 in Kranj, Slovenia, and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1967, majoring in sculpture. He is one of the founders of the OHO group. From 1965 to 1971, he worked as a member of the OHO group in the fields of conceptual art and land art. His art practice during the OHO period included drawings, comics, performance, experimental film, concrete poetry and essays.
From 1964, Pogačnik created "products" (imprints of everyday objects in plaster), followed by works based on strict numerical programs. In 1969, he developed installations based on the relationships of elements within the same "family" of items. His exhibitions include the Information Show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1970, Aktionsraum in Munich in 1970, and the Global Conceptualism Show (1950 - 1980) at the Queens Museum of Art in New York, 1999. In 1971 he founded, together with his family and friends, a rural and artistic community, the "Šempas Family" in Šempas, Slovenia, which existed until 1978. Exhibitions by the Family include Trigon in Graz (1977) and the Venice Biennale of 1978. Since 1979, Pogačnik has been engaged in geomantic projects and Earth healing work. In the mid-1980s he developed a method of Earth healing similar to acupuncture named “litopuncture”. He used stone pillars with carved cosmograms placed on acupuncture points of a specific landscape.
The author's wife, Marika Pogačnik, has cooperated with him from the founding of the OHO group and works with natural materials, primarily stone, fabric and wood. The author lives with his family in Šempas, Slovenia.